Poetry 108: Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice

Darkness envelops me

most hours of the day.
Yet, sweetness lies
in the moments.

This curious package
has always been.

Two sides of a coin
that cohabitate within me.

I do not fear the darkness,
or the light.
Both have brought blessings-
albeit disguised at times
in paupers clothing.

God's mysterious design
has often left me puzzled.

Transitioning to darkness in
the light of day?
Bringing back light
under a blackened blue sky?

How perfect.

To never allow us
to fully inhabit one world;
To force paradox
as to avoid simple conclusions;
To bring contradiction
right into the very center of balance;
To allow darkness
with an open heart...

Perhaps, this is god's version
of the right medicine
for our suffering human soul.

I know not.

Still,
my faith tells me
to close my eyes,
and allow the dark light

to work its magic

under the blanket of stars.

-Me

Bodhisattvas Remind Us: "After Night Comes Day"

In a recent DharmaSeed talk after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Jack Kornfield, a well-known Western Buddhist teacher and author, reminded his audience and Sangha, of the famous quote by Mahatma Ghandi, the great 20th century Indian leader of the non-violent independence movement:

"Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible.  But in the end, they always fall. Always."

I have found in these last few weeks I have needed these kinds of reminders from the Bodhisattvas of all time that impermanence is a truth greater than any given moment I happen to be experiencing.

Bodhisattva is a Sanskrit term for an enlightened human being who dedicates his or her life to the liberation and enlightenment of all sentient beings. It is said that this dedication, or devotion, stems from profound compassion,  but I would add it must include a healthy dose of courage and a sense of radical hope.

I know of no English word that is an equivalent to this ancient Sanskrit word, but I've been thinking about other "Bodhisattvas" (Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Humanist, and Athiest alike) whose lives give me hope at this time.

In one of my favorite movies, Amazing Grace (2006), there is a line that has been reverberating inside of me since the result of the U.S. Presidential Election came in: "After night comes day."

These words are said in a poignant scene in the film when William Wilberforce, who would be remembered by historians as a great slavery abolitionist in Great Britain and the world, is in terrible despair that his dream of anti-slavery legislation may never be full-filled. 

Distraught, after years of what we would now call: lobbying, advocating and community organizing to end slave trade, William has withdrawn to his cousin's home in what appears to be an emotionally depressed, physically exhausted and spiritually empty state.

But then, as Hollywood loves to do, he meets the woman named Barbara who would become his wife. 

And it is Barbara who reminds her future husband that as surly as he is devoted to god and the abolitionist movement, he can also be sure: "After night comes day."

William Wilberforce, or at least the Hollywood version of him, is a bit of a kindred spirit for me at this time in U.S. history, and with that, I've been seeking out my "Barbaras."

People who, in the face of our own confusion, despair, hurt and heartbreak, help us hold the long-view of history and the cosmos.

At this particular moment in U.S. history, I believe I'm not alone in this need for a more hopeful long-view of history.

Case in point: there was street parking only at my Unitarian Universalist Church on the Sunday after Donald Trump became President-Elect of the United States of America.  It seems I was not the only one who had a need to say the UU Benediction in unison with my other fellow Americans:

Go out into the world in peace,

Have courage

Hold onto what is good

Return to no person evil for evil

Strengthen the fainthearted

Support the weak

Help the suffering

Honor all beings.

I love these words.  And I love that there are other people out there who love these words too.

Sometimes though, I need more than a remembrance that there are others who believe that humanity should "honor all beings."

There are times, like after the recent presidential election, that I need to see these people with my own eyes.  Hear them with my own ears. And touch them with my own hands- as our Reverend  had us do during the recitation of the Benediction Closing at the end of the service.

I also needed the sensory experience of comradery after another experience, spawned I believe by the presidential election results, earlier in the same week in which I had an awful verbal exchange with another fellow countryman at my local Dunkin' Donuts (an American coffee shop). 

Still upset about it days after, I shared it online with the NPR radio show On Being after their re-release of a fantastic interview with the late, great American Civil Rights Leader and Thinker Vincent Harding who words and ideas are built to help us remember the long-view.

Below is what I wrote:

"I greatly appreciated revisiting this interview after not only the election results, but also a personal experience I had the day after the election.

I was in a Dunkin Donuts and another customer, who happened to be a white man, began to say in a very loud voice for all in the restaurant to hear, a series of very bigoted and derogatory comments about a female tv news anchor to another customer, who also happened to be a white man.

Quite upset by this, I confronted this man and told him to stop repeating this profane language that I found offensive, and his response to me was to not only not stop (he certainly kept going), but he yelled at me: "I can say whatever I want and do whatever I want. You can't stop me!"

Two days later now, I am still very upset by this event, but, listening to the piece in Mr. Harding's interview where he referred to us Americans as 'amateurs' in a 'developing nation' in terms of practicing democracy and democratic values, I found it strangely comforting.

I suppose it is actually not surprising though that it would take an elder, a deceased elder at that, to help me pull back from the intensity of the current moment in order to see the longer view of history and my place in it (as well as the other customer in Dunkin Donuts on Wednesday).

I wrote to a friend this week that I have been reminded by this election and my personal experience of the famous quote attributed to Rev Dr. Martin Luther King about the 'long arc of justice.' Mr. Harding helped remind me where we as a nation truly are on that arc.

But, now let's see if we can move that arc forward. As the old saying goes, in every crisis, there is an opportunity to take a big step forward."

Last summer I had shared with you all that my neighbor's house burned down to the ground.  Luckily everyone including the children and pets survived, but the house did not.

This past week I decided to drive up the road to see how reconstruction is progressing.

Seeing the bare bones construction of their new house reminded me again: "After night comes day."

May it be so.

Spiritual Lessons from Nature: Part VII

This past summer my hydrangea, just outside the door of my house, did not have one blossom.  Not one.

In the 9 years I have lived in my home, this beautiful bush has created the most gorgeous blue flowers every other year.  Not this year though.

Why was this I wondered?

I did nothing different in the way I cared for it.  I was exactly the same. 

Which left me questioning if other conditions, conditions in my environment outside of my control, did change.  Or maybe, a condition had been accumulating over the past few growing seasons that I was not aware of- or perhaps, ignoring.

A fan of Oprah Winfrey's television show Super Soul Sunday, I have often heard Ms. Winfrey ask the prominent spiritual and religious thinkers she is lucky enough to interview: What spiritual lesson did it take you the longest to learn?

Such a great question.

For me, right now anyway, it is this: I can do everything "right," and still lose big.

Yeah, still working on that one...

I think though, like my hydrangea, it may have something to do with some of those mysterious concepts that Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh speaks and writes about that intrigue me so- like:  Interbeing and Interconnection. 

I'm also wondering about some of those other Buddhists concepts that I don't pretend to understand, but rather bat around in my tiny brain, like individual Karma and community Karma that speak to the power and influence of causes and conditions- even when we may not have entirely discovered what those causes and conditions are.

As always, these days especially in the post-election United States, there is much to contemplate and many opportunities to practice from the moment you walk out your front door.

Blessings to you in your own contemplation and practice today.

Poetry 107: Merging Landscapes

Merging Landscapes

I no longer know where I begin

and where I end.

Am I the sky,

the wind,

the ground upon which I stand?

When sadness and joy

stand beside each other

under a cloudy sky,

where is the luminous sun?

The reflective moon?

As always,

I seem to have more questions

than answers.

Yet when the cold air enters my skin

as I move through the mundane,

or the hot air forces sweat down my brow

as I write these very words,

I feel the unmistakable

merging of landscapes

that makes the pain

of the world bearable

for just

one

more

day.

Because I know,

the manufactured borderland

of internal and external

disappears into only sensation

in the end;

when all that remains

is infinity.

In these transcendent moments,

I am no longer me,

And you are no longer you.

When creation is creator,

And creator is creation.

When we are all finally free.

-Me

Kindred Spirits: David Whyte

No One Told Me

By David Whyte

No one told me
it would lead to this.
No one said
there would be secrets
I would not want to know.

No one told me about seeing.
seeing brought me loss and a darkness I could not hold.

No one told me about writing
or speaking.

Speaking and writing poetry
I unsheathed the sharp edge
of experience that led me here.
No one told me
it could not be put away.

I was told once, only
in a whisper,
‘The blade is so sharp-
It cuts together
-not apart’

This is no comfort.
My future is full of blood
from being blindfolded
hands outstretched,
feeling a way along its firm edge.

This poem, "No One Told Me" by David Whyte, that I read for the first time the other day, felt like looking in a mirror. It reminded me of what I had wanted, had tried, to convey in July of this year when I posted a poem under the title "Bittersweet Awakening."

I'm loving the mystery of this crazy perfect universe.

Poetry 106: Just As I Am

Just as I am

Maybe I  am more like,

just like,

the blade of grass. 

The crow. 

The cloud in the sky. 

Maybe, just maybe,

god  wanted me 

just 

like 

this. 

Just as I am. 

Could that possibly be possible?

I can't even fathom,

and yet, I now wonder. 

Often. 

Because if that's true,

as things like god and theology can be,

then, what?

Do I sit?

Take a breath?

Maybe two. 

Do I let go?

Do I step outside 

to sing, celebrate and breakdance in the street?

What if I am already the person I am supposed to be?

What if my mind is the mind it is supposed to be?

And my body is the body it is supposed to be?

What would I do then?

How would I proceed?

To realize, at age 39, 

that me 

and the black bear outside my door 

are exactly as we should be,

seems like the worst April fools joke

that could simultaneously mean my freedom. 

If I embody myself,

just as I am,

what would happen next?


-Me

Embracing Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe

In the past month I have had the fortunate opportunity to fully embrace Jon Kabat-Zinn's classic book Full Catastrophe Living through further study and practice of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at The Center for Mindfulness in the heart center of New England.

The experience has been a dream come true.

Just walking the halls before and after class at The Center for Mindfulness I get this kid-on-Christmas-morning feeling when I think about the incredible legacy of human beings who have worked, gathered and/or sat in that building in the concerted effort to share the gift of mindfulness with the Western world and beyond.

My new teacher brought up this very legacy at our first gathering.

She invited us to imagine ourselves as similar to Russian Nesting Dolls, or Matryoshka Dolls; a set of wooden dolls of varying sizes in which one sits inside the other.

When I allowed myself to contemplate little me as a teeny tiny doll on the inside of layers and layers of larger dolls that represented an inheritance of a growing community and leaders (of all shapes and sizes) in western mindfulness meditation, my cup runneth over.

How did I get so lucky?

Maybe it's not luck though...

There were definite causes and conditions that brought me to that exact moment that I entered the building where the founder of MBSR made roots.

Consider this poem by twentieth century American poet William Stafford:

The Way It Is

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

And here's the punchline, or maybe the paradox, if I look deeply (as Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh recommends that we do) at the thread William Stafford refers to that brought me to this intersection with MBSR at The Center for Mindfulness, I would unquestionably encounter my own full catastrophe.

In the beginning of Full Catastrophe Living: How to Cope with Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation Jon Kabat-Zinn tells the story of how the unique title of his book was born from a memorable scene from the movie version of the novel Zorba the Greek.  He tells the story like this:

Zorba's young companion [in the movie] turns to him at a certain point and inquires, 'Zorba, have you ever been married' to which Zorba replies, growling, 'Am I not a man? Of course I've been married. Wife, house, kids...the full catastrophe!"

It was not mean to be a lament, nor does it mean that being married or having children is a catastrophe. Zorba's response embodies supreme appreciation for the richness of life and the inevitability of all its dilemmas, sorrows, traumas, tragedies, and ironies...

Ever since I first heard it, I have felt that the phrase 'the full catastrophe' captures something positive about the human spirit's ability to come to grips with what is most difficult in life and to find within it room to grow in strength and wisdom.  For me, facing the full catastrophe means finding and coming to terms with what is deepest and best and ultimately, what is most human within ourselves.  There is not one person on the planet who does not have his or her own version of the full catastrophe.

Catastrophe here does not mean disaster. Rather, it means the poignant enormity of our experience.

In class this week my teacher asked us, the MBSR students, to consider what were the causes and conditions that made up our own path, or Way, to this particular moment at The Center for Mindfulness.

At first glance, the exercise seemed relatively straightforward.

For instance, I reflected back on particular influences from childhood and young adulthood who had contributed to my early interest in yoga.  I recognized the growing hunger I had had throughout my 30's for a saner way to live that would be helpful to myself and others as well.

But then, as I looked deeper, the thread began to include some of the most sorrowful moments of my life as well.

A miscarriage.
A death of a friend to AIDS when I was a teenager.
Alcoholic loved ones.
A father-in-law with early-onset Alzheimer's.

I also saw the emergence of words and phrases that felt like a truth I had known my whole life when I read them for the first time.

"I live my life in widening circles." -Rainer Maria Rilke

"Mindfulness is the basis of happiness." -Thich Nhat Hanh

"What will you do with your one wild precious life." -Mary Oliver

"Don't turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That's where the Light enters you."      -Jelladin Rumi

When I finished the exercise, it was poignantly clear to me that to have escaped "the full catastrophe" would have been to have escaped my life.  The alternative to which would be a full embodiment of life and living exactly as god, grace and the universe itself would have it.

Yeah, I gotta admit I'm pretty far from that too...

I am now nearing the halfway point in this intensive study though, and I'm getting a little more comfortable with the fact that I honestly don't know where this thread will ultimately lead me.

And wherever my thread winds and ravels to and from, I do know for certain, my relationship to the "full catastrophe" is shifting from a resentful resignation toward a kinder and more loving acceptance of what 13th Century Sufi poet Jelladin Rumi called "the bandaged place."

I credit this shift to two things.

One: Mystery.  (And for anyone who knows me, this is a very unlikely thing for me to say!)

And Two: Legacy. A sentiment captured perfectly by these words by 20th century Jungian Author Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

We have not even to risk the journey alone, for the heroes of all times have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we sought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will have come to the center of our existence.  And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.

Poetry 105: Unbound My Heart

Unbound My Heart

Once tightly wrapped,

my heart

is beginning to see light.

Slowly at first,

scared to death.

Was it like a mummy

or a muzzle?

Seems cruel to me now,

though I know

it was for self-protection.

Or was it?

They say my heart is wide enough

to hold the whole world-

could that possibly be true?

Skeptically,

cautiously,

I remove one bandage at a time.

Both terrified and excited

for a life in the wide open space

of unrestricted

freedom.

-Me

A Brick Wall in Yoga: Body Image

Several years ago I was forced to renovate my bathroom due to water damage that had caused rot in the walls and floor. 

It was a completely inconvenient and expensive affair, made even more challenging when we learned that the walls of our house (built in the 1950’s) was in fact insulated with newspaper.

I’m finding myself in a similar predicament right now with my yoga (asana) practice. 

I’m at a place that I can no longer avoid the reality that renovation is not just a good idea, but rather a necessity due to years of a practice that has gotten damaged over time, and may have been built on some faulty precepts to begin with.

This is not easy to admit.  Particularly now, on the 15^th Anniversary of my yoga practice.

It is a realization that came to ahead about 4 months ago when I was sitting in a 5-day Silent Mindfulness Meditation Retreat.  It was Day 3, and I was struggling.

Body sensations were firing left and right. Childhood memories were coming up like a firestorm.  It was rough.

Not because I thought something was wrong or bad about it.  These are all experiences one might understand or even expect when you slow down and enter periods of deep stillness.  I did.

No, what I found most difficult was the growing awareness that I had been viewing my meditation practice as chiefly a mind exercise and my yoga (asana) practice as a principally a body exercise. 

Why was this a problem you ask?

Well, it was not a problem per se, but by limiting and compartmentalizing these two practices into narrow categories of “mind” and “body,” I was effectively doing 3 things:

1.)Short-changing the benefits of both practices.
2.)Missing the forest for the trees in terms of a “yogic” or “yoke” experience of a bidirectional mind and body experience.
3.)Leaving a wide-open door for all of my body-image baggage to sneak its way into my yoga (asana) practice. And, to my dismay, I realized it had.

Of all of them, it is #3 that has me preoccupied the most.  It is #3 that I have been least able to skillfully address.  It is #3 that has led me to avoid my yoga mat for much of the summer, and I feel like I have hit a brick wall in my yoga practice.

Since there is now a whole new sub-community dedicated to the issue of body image in the western yoga world, I know I am not alone in this.

An organization based out of California called The Yoga and Body Image Coalition has been increasing their presence on the internet and in publications like Yoga Journal to remind the yoga community, and those who have felt excluded from the yoga community, that being a yogi has nothing to do with the stereotype one might imagine- namely the middle-upper class, young, white, female who is of course thin.

What’s interesting for me is, when I started practicing yoga 15 years ago, I was that stereotype, and yet all that body image baggage was still as great an obstacle for me internally, as it may have been for others who did not fit the stereotype, externally.

It saddens me and embarrasses me to admit this.

I wish I was happily sharing how far I’ve come.  How much I’ve evolved.  How integrated and whole I’ve become…And in a way, I feel confronted with a word that I have tried--to no avail--to extract from my lexicon: failure.

Of course my reasonable mind can quickly contradict this thought of “failure.” 

Within seconds of the “failure” thought, my psychotherapist hat pops right  on, and I can go off on all the reasons why this new insight is good for me.

A.)It is actually a sign of growth.

B.)Yoga is a “living practice” they say. 

C.)You can’t fail at yoga, it doesn’t even work that way.

And that is true.  I know it’s true, but sometimes it doesn’t feel true.

My son and I recently went to a Yoga Festival together and I heard a yoga teacher ask the question: What is perfect yoga?

It was a rhetorical question, but given that I was currently up against a brick wall in my yoga practice that was based in all kinds of beliefs and narratives about perfection, the teacher’s question hit home for me.

So what has helped?

If you read this blog, then you know I’m a big fan of strategies to help myself (and others too) through the sticky spots of the spiritual life.

Two strategies have been a back to basics renovation of my asana practice and the way I engage with my body.

First, I created a list of what are wholesome intentions for my yoga practice (intentions that are in line with my values and how I interpret the values of yoga to be) and what are unwholesome intentions (most often sub or unconscious intentions) to increase my awareness for when I begin to slip into that habitual area of distorted body-image.

Thus far, the list looks like this:

Wholesome Intentions:

Curiosity, Challenge, Exploring Limits, Investigating, Listening, Opening, Open hearted, Inhabiting, Embodying, Detoxing, Relaxing, Wholeness, Integration, Dropping in, Healing, Self compassion, Reconnecting, Stretching, Devotion, Gratitude, Primitive animal nature, Self love, Investigating, Strengthening.

Unwholesome Intentions:

Perfecting, Sculpting, Altering, Shaming, Blaming, Hating, Pushing, Forcing, If only-ing, Criticizing, Putting down, Labeling, Reconstructing, Personalizing, Goal-directed, Outcome-driven, Painful, Harming, Punishing, Striving, Penance, Punitive.

Second, I’ve created another list (can you tell yet I’m a Type A?!) of some do’s and don’ts that have been helpful to me along the way to break the habits of negative body image thinking and behavior.  They go like this:

Learn to feed your body- what it needs to run on all cylinders.
Learn to stop eating when your body is full.
Water your body throughout the day (like a plant or your dog)
Stand up and move your body for at least 60 seconds every hour on the hour (except when you are sleeping)
 Let your body sleep at nighttime at least 5-9 hours a day.
When possible, put your feet above your head and heart once a day for at least 60 seconds.
Take one conscious breath (in and out) each time you transition from one action/activity to another.
Bathe, brush your teeth and floss regularly.
Do not suck in your belly when you walk by a mirror.
 Do not examine your butt when you walk by a mirror.
Do not criticize your thighs when you walk by a mirror.
 Do not focus solely on your double (triple) chins in a photograph of you.
Do not bury your emotions under a pile of food.
If you have a fever, rest. 
If you have a fever for more than 3 days, go to your doctor.
Do not toxify your liver or kidneys.
Feel the bottoms of your feet when you walk.
Feel your chest move in and out when you breathe.
Do not cover up your butt with long shirts, cardigans and jackets.
Do not underestimate what your body can do by saying “My body can’t do that,” before you have even tried it.
Be curious.
Have a regular physical.
Have a regular gynecological exam.
Have a regular mammogram and breast exam.
Include fruits, vegetables, protein, antioxidants and omegas in your meal plan.
Express gratitude for your body as a whole and with each individual part and organ on a regular basis for all their hard work.
Give direct loving attention to each area of the body on a regular basis with the body scan, massage or a simple prayer.
Take brain breaks before bed by choosing to not engage in problem solving, analyzing, perseverating, or ruminating.
 Engage in movement activities several times a week that allow your ego/mind to take a backseat to your body for a time (e.g. swimming or other exercise, yoga poses, sex, dancing).
 Talk to and about your body with the respect, tenderness and kindness that you would offer a girl or boy of age 9 or 10.
 Occasionally remind yourself of the impermanence of the body- we know how this story will end
Remember that your body is an ally that has been with you since day one, not an enemy.
 Remember that your relationship with your body is just like any other relationship, and to be a healthy relationship it requires regular amounts of compassion, deep listening, kindness, long-term investment, and effort.

The other piece I have found helpful is in the book Heal Thy Self by co-founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, Saki Santorelli.

In his chapter called “The Soft Body of Your Calling,” he writes:

Oh, servant of the healing arts…Aren’t you searching for the cure too? Aren’t you curled up close, protecting that old interior soreness, that longing for remedy you secretly hope for but hardly dare to admit? Let’s talk about this! How else could you possibly be of help to another? What could have drawn you to this calling if not this reference point, this open inside wound that needs tending?

Look, my friend, we are all wounded. Welcome home! No more hiding! Fragmented and longing, aren’t we all searching for the cure that will restore us to wholeness?...

If language and music are ample evidence of a deeper silence, our wounds and flaws are sure signs of our fundamental completeness. If speech is a finger pointing toward the unspoken, our sense of incompleteness, our fragile, tender vulnerability is a sure sign of our strength.  This tender softness is a portal. We hide it. Call it flaw, never realizing it is the entry point for marvelous possibility. Rumi reminds us of the entryway:

            

            Trust your wound to a Teacher’s surgery.

            Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,

Those flies of your self-protecting feelings,

Your love for what you think is yours.

Let a Teacher wave away the flies

And put a plaster on the wound.

Don’t turn your head. Keep looking

At the bandaged place. That’s where

The Light enters you.

And don’t believe for a moment

That you’re healing yourself.

Mr. Santorelli’s gorgeous language struck such a cord deep inside my soul, that I continue to go back to read it again and again. 

His words (and the poet Rumi’s) have been like poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s phrase “the hands that work on us” for me as I begin, brick by brick, to gently remove this brick wall in myself and in my yoga practice.

What brick walls have you encountered in the spiritual life? What renovations have you had to make to maintain a wholesome spiritual practice?

Letting Go in Motherhood

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, motherhood is not for the faint-hearted.

In my early twenties I lived in Central Asia working for the Peace Corps, and I was told that the Peace Corps would be the “toughest job you’ll ever love.”

They were wrong. 

Motherhood trumps Peace Corps any day of the week and twice on school nights right  after football practice.

This truth was exquisitely illustrated today when I dropped off my youngest, my baby, to her first day of Pre-School.

With her toddler-size white sandals and a bow in her curly hair, my daughter held my hand tight as we walked to her classroom in the back of the school.  And then, as nature would have it, she released my hand, and courageously walked toward her kind and smiling teacher, not looking back.

It was perfect.

As was the ache in my heart.

Letting go.  Non-attachment.  Non-grasping.  Radical acceptance.  Impermanence.  All elephants of a different color that today felt like impossible spiritual practices in the context of parenthood.

Yet in this moment, 3 ideas from the diverse realms of science, philosophy and poetry are like salve for a wound.

The first idea, from science, I heard in an interview with Matthieu Ricard, a French-Tibetan monk, author, humanitarian, and the Dalai Lama's French interpreter. 

His comment stemmed from a conversation he had  had with an astrophysicist that he documented in his book, The Quantum and the Lotus, of which Matthieu Ricard said:

The most fascinating thing I learned through this dialogue was precisely about something very deep about the nature of reality related to interdependence  and impermanence…

The fact that if one photon or particle split into two, and they shoot out at physically any distance in the universe, they still remain part of a whole.  So there's something there that is still not separate.  So that was a credible insight for me because interdependence is not just the fact that things are related, but also that, therefore, they are devoid of total autonomous, independent existence.

This morning, as my daughter “split off” and “shot out into the universe,” I took solace in knowing she and I “still remain part of a whole.”

The second idea was from philosophy.

In my effort to skillfully embrace this letting-go life stage milestone with my daughter, I sought out the council of Shunryu Suzuki from his classic book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. 

As a lay-person, I figured it was a no-brainer that he would have some sort of good advice about this topic of impermanence.

And voila!

In his chapter called “Attachment, Non-Attachment” he quotes Dogen-zenji (see we all seek council from some wise soul..) who said:

Although everything has Buddha nature, we love flowers, and we do not care for weeds…A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

Of this, Shunryu Suzuki writes:

In this way our life should be understood. Then there is no problem…Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different; in essence they are the same.

Reading this passage today somehow offered me permission to allow all the various (and contradictory) emotions of this parent-child milestone, knowing all of them arise and return to the same source.  And, that I should not be so quick to interpret the difficult emotions as some sort of “problem” or sign of grasping.

The third, and final, idea is from poetry.

Having previously read several of his poems, but having none of them “in my blood stream” (as translator Joanna Macy says of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke), I decided to look up a few of the poems of departed Irish poet John O’Donohue.

I remembered that to me his poems felt more like prayers, and today, as I first officially sent my baby girl off into the world, I certainly wanted to do it with a spirit of faith, love and blessing.

With that, I’ll close this entry with 2 poems from Mr. John O’Donohue: For a New Beginning and Beannacht.

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Beannacht

On the day when

The weight deadens

On your shoulders

And you stumble,

May the clay dance

To balance you.

And when your eyes

Freeze behind

The grey window

And the ghost of loss

Gets into you,

May a flock of colours,

Indigo, red, green

And azure blue,

Come to awaken in you

A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

In the currach of thought

And a stain of ocean

Blackens beneath you,

May there come across the waters

A path of yellow moonlight

To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

Wind work these words

Of love around you,

An invisible cloak

To mind your life.

Why "Motherhood" in the Spiritual Life?

People have asked me why I included “Motherhood” in the title of this blog: Meditation, Motherhood, Mysticism & More.

 

So on the 2 Year Anniversary of this Blog, I would like to answer that question with one of my favorite Zen Sayings:

Before I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water. 

After I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water.

Or in my case:

            Before I began to awaken, I read bedtime stories and changed diapers.

            While I continue to awaken, I read bedtime stories and change diapers.

Making the decision, and I do consider it a decision, to intentionally engage in spiritual and religious practices during young motherhood absolutely shaped, and continues to shape, my mystical journey. How could it not? These two life game-changers happened simultaneously.

One could try to argue that my career, the field of psychotherapy, could be substituted in for the word “Motherhood” in the title of this blog.  Because, for certain, my spiritual life is integrated into my professional life and craft in any number of ways, and vice versa.

The thing is, aside from the fact that "Psychotherapy" does not start with the letter "M," in August, 2014 I had a 9 month-old infant and a 5 year-old son in addition to a career as a psychotherapist, and at that time I knew my experience as a mother was going to shape my spiritual life and my spiritual life was going to shape my life as a mother more than, at that time, my life as a psychotherapist (or wife, or friend, or daughter, or sister, or citizen, or social worker, or any of the other hosts of hats that we all may wear).

So I believe it was a knowing, a piece of intuitive wisdom if you will, that told me motherhood was a key that would unlock something inaccessible to me thus far (and unknown), and I wanted to honor that experiential awakening in the title of this blog.

The title was also a reminder.

I wanted a visible reminder of the reality that it is my belief, like others, that there is no outcome in a spiritual life.  There is no goal to attain.

However, as a goal-oriented Type A, this is something that is very hard for me to remember, so I need the reminder, daily.

Susan O’Brien, a Meditation Teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, MA who I was fortunate enough to have at a 5-day Silent Meditation Retreat said in one of her Dharma Talks called Hoping, Fearing, Seeing the Truth:

We can find, sometimes, this desire for paradise in our efforts.  Wanting something other…

But what if we shift our perspective a little bit?  If we are holding enlightenment out here, as something distant, something so distant, so perfect, so paradise, as to make it un-attainable. What if we trusted that our very nature is enlightenment?

And that our job here on the cushion and in our lives is to see what obscures that.  What covers it over.  What blocks it- that natural state of awake, being, that we are.

Twentieth century Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki talked about the need for this very same reminder in his classic book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

He wrote in his chapter called "Right Attitude:"

"I have often talked to you about a frog, and each time everybody laughs. But a frog is very interesting. He sits like us, too, you know. But he does not think that he is doing anything so special.  When you go to a zendo and sit, you may think you are doing some special thing. While your husband of wife is sleeping, you are practicing zazen! You are doing some special thing, and your spouse is lazy! That may be your understanding of zazen. But look at the frog. A frog also sits like us, but he has no idea of zazen. Watch him. If something annoys him, he will make a face. If something comes along to eat, he will snap it up and eat, and he eats sitting. Actually that is our zazen- not any special thing."

For all those parents out there like me who are also currently raising young children and live with a spouse who does not also practice daily (like the frog, no judgment), then you know as well  as I do, that our time to practice meditation, prayer or yoga may feel like sacred, set aside time for you, but it is certainly not off limits to our beloveds.

By putting "Motherhood" in the title of this blog, I was reminding myself that my spiritual and religious life would be in the context of my chaotic, messy family life- as it should be.

Shunryu Suzuki said: "When you become you, Zen becomes Zen. When you are you, you see things as they are, and you become one with your surroundings."  My surroundings where I practice daily is the company of my young children.  To not include them would be to deny my reality.

The last reason I wanted "Motherhood" in the title of this blog was because, for me, motherhood turned on a light switch of awakening inside of me, but the awakening did not bring me to any different place (externally or internally) than I already was. 

For some Type A’s (me) that can be a tough one to swallow.

Yet, somewhere between the 3^rd consecutive hour of walking my crying baby up and down the hallway to soothe him, calling out of work on a very busy day to stay home with a toddler with a fever, cutting costs in the family budget to cover daycare costs, I ended up getting a lot of practice in deep spiritual lessons off the cushion (and the mat, and the sanctuary) of:

v  discipline,

v  patience,

v  non-attachment,

v  self-awareness,

v  compassion,

v  empathy,

v  right speech,

v  right action,

v  resistance,

v  sleepiness/fatigue,

v  non-judgmental stance,

v  focused attention,

v  sympathetic joy,

v  among others like impermanence, inter-being, interconnection and understanding ego.

What’s more, the parenting equivalent of “chopping wood and carrying water” was and is paradoxically both the practice and the fruit.  There’s a koan for you…

Spiritual memoirist and novelist Sue Monk Kidd comes to mind again (I’ve been quoting her a lot lately…) as she has written and talked in interviews about the very idea that the spiritual life is extraordinary in its oh-so ordinary nature.

In an interview where Ms. Kidd described a moment awakening that she once had on the way to the post office she said:

It's so ordinary. That's what I love about the spiritual life, is that it's so utterly ordinary, and it should be really. It's both extraordinary and ordinary. Sometimes those moments of awakening or knowing can come when we least expect it.

It certainly was unexpected for me, that’s for sure. 

If someone had told me in my twenties that I would begin to consciously walk a spiritual life in my thirties, I would have thought: “You are nuts! You obviously don’t know me at all!”

Well, it turned out I didn’t know me- a part of me anyway. 

I was still asleep to the spiritual being inside of me.  It’s like she was lying dormant until I became a mother and that light switch turned on.

Swiss Psychiatrist, C.G. Jung, described the possibility of this latent True Self the following way in his writing  Man and His Symbols with the metaphor of a Pine Tree Seed.

The seed of a mountain pine contains the whole future tree in a latent form; but each seed falls at a certain time onto a particular place, in which there are a number of special factors, such as the quality of the soil and the stones, the slope of the land, and its exposure to the sun and wind. The latent totality of the pine in the seed reacts to these circumstances by avoiding the stones and inclining toward the sun, with the result that the tree's growth is shaped. Thus an individual pine slowly comes into existence, constituting the fulfillment of its totality, its emergence into the realm of reality. Without the living tree, the image of the pine is only a possibility or an abstract idea.

Perhaps for me, motherhood contained just enough of those “special factors” to awaken a spiritual seed inside of me that was already there.  And for that, I am infinitely grateful.

What special factors prompted your own awakening?